Route B
by nambnb
Summary: Someone not quite alive wanting to live and somebody living wanting to die - mix and stir and see what discoveries await them should they decide to embark on a journey together.
1. Chapter 1

On the day when Oval Tower had collapsed, Clear had recognized that Mink hadn't taken the route the other's were to get away from Platinum Jail afterwards, and that his team members had been frantically looking for him, not knowing where he was and even worrying that he had been buried underneath the rubble. Clear could rule out that possibility though, since his memory had provided him with a picture of all the people of their five-man-group being alive and well, after the tower had collapsed. Noiz had been standing to his left and Aoba had been sitting to his right, while he was supported by Koujaku and cradled Ren in his arms. And Mink had been standing only a little ways off from them and he didn't appear to be hurt at all while he smoked his pipe and his Allmate Tori soared in the sky above the remains of Oval Tower.  
Clear's first instinct had been to follow after his master Aoba, because he was crying all the time and not even Ren licking his face or Koujaku patting his back had been able to calm him down then. But when he had heard the members of Scratch desperately yelling their leader's name and attempting to search every piece of debris for him, Clear had decided to help them, evaluating Koujaku's company as enough of a support for his master as of now to get home safely.  
To put Mink's worried team members at ease, Clear had offered them to track Mink down and had made use of his extraordinary good hearing abilities. He had found him in a dark corner of Platinum Jail's streets, propped on his knees and holding a hunting knife to his abdomen, likely to strike at himself at any moment. Clear had rushed to his side and prevented Mink from killing himself in an instant, earning himself a harsh beating with fists and was shouted at not to meddle with Mink's affairs since it was absolutely none of his business. Clear had countered that he was sick of people he cared for dying and that Mink should not simply throw away his life like it was nothing. Mink had obviously not understood why Clear would put him in his caring-for-you-category then, but as one of his master's friends, Clear wanted to be friends with Mink, too, and thus he did care about his wellbeing as well. Mink had then tried to get away from Clear, likely to find a more secluded place to commit suicide yet again, but Clear kept following him around and eventually they had met with Mink's team members who had appeared to be more than happy to see him again, thanking Clear and making Mink temporarily forget about his plans to kill himself it seemed.

* * *

After the events in Platinum Jail and the collapse of Oval Tower everyone's lives returned pretty much to normal and Clear liked it better that way. The only thing saddening him a little was the fact that even though him, Aoba and his friends had displayed great team play while fighting against Toue, all of Clear's new buddies were scattered all over Midorijima's Old Resident District again without keeping in contact amongst each other much. That didn't prevent Clear from visiting his master and his newly acquired friends occasionally, though. The most important person on his list to look after was Aoba, especially since he seemed to be so down after the collapse of Oval Tower. It had to have to do with his Allmate Ren apparently being broken and Clear could associate with losing somebody close to himself. Clear had of course suggested to let Ren be repaired if he was broken, but Aoba had told him that there wasn't something physically wrong with Ren, it was his personality that was gone and Aoba felt responsible for it for some reason. Maybe their efforts in saving Ren by all of them being drawn inside of Rhyme and protecting Aoba while he tried to scrap Ren had been in vain? Clear didn't really know and whenever the conversation went in that direction, Aoba would refuse to talk about it any further. He seemed to be very hurt indeed. As far as Clear had understood it, Aoba had been with Ren for a very long time so it was no wonder that he missed him exceedingly. The only thing Clear could do was trying to cheer him up by preparing him lunch from time to time, try to invent jokes during conversations or singing him to sleep when he heard Aoba crying in bed without being able to calm down, which sadly happened very often. Other than that he could only attempt to make Aoba not to feel that much alone by keeping him company - at least whenever that spot wasn't filled by his old friend Koujaku already.

Aside from caring for Aoba, Clear still liked to stroll through the Old Resident District a lot, so he used his walks to say hi to Aoba's other friends, too. It was a bit hard to greet Koujaku, the hairdresser, since he was always surrounded by a lot of girls, if not at Aoba's home, and they would get into a slight panic whenever Clear came close to Koujaku to strike up a conversation. They would point fingers at him and screeched until Koujaku assured them that he was no one suspicious just because he kept wearing a gas mask over his face. It was not like Clear wore that mask for fun, though, so he couldn't really do anything about it.  
Aoba's strawberry-blonde friend named Noiz could sometimes be found at Rhyme battles that were now owned by another company than Toue's. But since there was no Usui anymore, that popped up at random times and locations, and the battles were now announced properly before starting, Noiz' role as an information broker on Usui's appearance especially, was not needed anymore. It didn't seem to affect him negatively, however, and Clear was sure that somebody with Noiz' skills could do practically anything. He once had asked him whether he would be able to repair Ren, but Noiz had told him that the problem wasn't something he could solve, so there was no use trying.  
Aside from that Clear could sometimes hear Noiz' voice from the same place as Koujaku's when he strolled the streets of the Old Resident District at night. They seemed to be in a pretty good mood most of the time, probably because they were engaging in something that made each other feel good and consisted of moaning loudly and creaking bed noises for the most part.

* * *

About a week after Oval Tower had collapsed and Platinum Jail, including its airports, had been opened to more or less everyone on Midorijima now, Clear had met with Mink without intending to do so this time. Clear had just been trying to get a better look at the new areas accessible for strolls now and Mink seemed to be on his way to the airport, so he greeted him cheerfully.  
"Mink-san! What a coincidence! Taking a walk, too?"

If the bag Mink carried under his arm was any indication, the taller man probably was about to embark on a journey rather than leisurely walking around without a concrete goal in mind like Clear was. Mink looked back at the man clad in white grimly, but then decided to answer his question in hope that he would get rid of him that way.  
"I'm going to visit my home country."

Clear's face brightened up like that of a little kid you just had offered candy to. It was hidden below his mask, but the onlooker might swear to see some mysterious, pink flowers pop up next to his face.  
"Oh! Mink-san is going on a journey? Will you visit your family and friends over there?"

Mink's face that always looked rather moody took a turn for the worse and he answered Clear only after a long pause.  
"Thanks to that bastard Toue, I'll be visiting their graves rather than their homes."  
Before Clear could utter words of consolation, though, Mink gave him a fierce look and gave his voice a sterner tone than usual.  
"Don't you dare getting in my way this time, Gas Mask."

Clear blinked underneath his mask and didn't understand why he would even try to keep Mink from paying his respects towards his deceased family members. But then he gasped as he slowly came up with the answer to the question what might follow Mink's visit to his beloveds' graves: faced with what he had lost and probably feeling lonely beyond compare, he might come to the point of wanting to throw away his life all over again. The fact that the cheerful look on Clear's face had fallen as his mind worked in rapid succession was only noticeable from the outside by him lowering his head, since pretty much all of Clear's emotions kept being hidden behind the leathery item he wore constantly. Still, his voice could be heard and he sounded upset, balling his fists while he spoke.  
"I am sorry to hear that Mink-san has nobody to return to at the place he comes from. Please forgive my insensitivity concerning that matter, but..."  
He looked back up to Mink, took a step towards the other man and grabbed his hand in an effort to make him listen - his hand was slapped away immediately, though and Mink was about to bark a curse at him but Clear interrupted him by continuing to speak.  
"Even though your loss must have been very great, when you are done paying your respects to your people, please think about the people you still have left over here and who are concerned for your wellbeing even if they aren't related to you by blood, Mink-san!"

Mink looked at him like he didn't know what Clear was going on about and gave off an annoyed, grumbled reply.  
"What are you even talking about, Gas Mask?"

Clear took another step towards Mink, this time grabbing both his hands and staring him directly in the eye and Mink could swear to see a flash of pink from behind the see-through parts of the other's mask covering the area around his eyes.

The taller man, who was much more muscular than the more slender framed Clear, became more and more enraged by the other guy's renewed violation of his privacy - mind- and body-wise. His brows furrowed even deeper and his blueish tinted eyes grew colder. Of course he had tried to free his hands immediately yet again, but this time he had failed. Even if he had seen him fight, Mink had trouble to believe how easy it was for this gas mask guy to take hold of him this firmly without even so much as breaking into a sweat. His patience running thinner by the minute as Clear would neither ease his grip on him, nor come to the point, made him growl darkly as if to give the other a last warning.  
"Let go."

"Not before you listen to me properly, Mink-san! It's important!", Clear was very insistent on this and it looked like he wouldn't back off until he was able to say his piece, so Mink bit down on his pride unwillingly with clenched teeth and then gave off a snort to signalize that Clear should get this over with finally, before Mink exploded.  
"Thank you. Now, to explain further. The members of your Rib team are your friends, right? Maybe they even feel like a family to you. They definitely care for you deeply, Mink-san! Please consider returning to them after you have paid your respects to your late relatives since your team-mates will surely miss you dearly when you're gone as much as you are missing your family right now!"

Mink was bewildered beyond compare, even if it didn't show on his face other than to take on a stunned look now. How did this gas mask type dare to butt into his affairs so much and tell him what to do? He felt deeply seated furry rise from within himself and gathered all of his strength to headbutt the hell out of Clear, who let go off his hands then. Surprised about Clear's head feeling even harder than he had thought he would, he briefly rubbed his forehead before turning around on his heels and continuing to walk to the airport.

Clear, left dizzy for a moment and seeing stars, tried to gather his marbles again and shouted after Mink: "At least think about it!" before he gave up his pursuit and went back to take the route he had originally intended for his walk.  
Clear walked around with his view directed towards the concrete as he wondered whether his words had reached Mink at all. But then again he was a firm believer in the fact that once somebody planted a thought inside of you, you at least started thinking about it. So whatever the outcome of Mink's journey would be, at the very least Clear had tried to convince him that his life was important for other people, even if it didn't seem to be important to himself. With that in mind he tried to draw a line under the subject, lifted his head up again and continued his exploration of the airport.

* * *

But even though Clear told himself in his head that Mink probably would be fine over and over again, he caught himself following the tall man, before he even recognized that he was doing it after having made a u-turn at the previous corner. At first he tried to convince himself that he had wanted to visit the airport to widen his walking territory anyway and Mink and him just happened to share the same way to walk around, but then he had followed Mink not only in the same direction but up to the terminals that were crowded with people.  
It looked like half of Midorijima's residents wanted to get off the island as soon as possible for whatever reason. Clear had trouble following Mink's figure, even though he was tall, and then he lost track of his footsteps, since they mingled too much with the noise of the crowd even though his hearing was excellent. He tried to look over the heads of various people that blocked his path but it was hard not to loose Mink's back amidst hundreds of others. Still, Clear was able to follow Mink somehow, until he reached the terminal counters and heard him swear loudly as the nice lady at the counter talked to him in the most composed tone she could muster in front of a brutish looking hunk like Mink, who had just slammed his heavy fist down in front of her. Then he turned on his heels with another curse under his breath and headed over to the airport's waiting area.  
Clear headed over to the counter and, after waiting in line patiently, asked the lady where the tall man with the dark overcoat and the pink headband had wanted to go that he was so upset. He was told that Mink was headed to a place roughly 10 hours on plane away from Midorijima and that said plane was delayed by at least two hours since the airport simply hadn't been ready to deal with as many passengers as they were currently overflowing every nook and cranny of the place and there were other flights before Mink's plane could even be rolled to the gates. The lady asked if Clear wanted to go to the same destination and after a pause, Clear simply said yes, but being told the ticket price, he recognized that he didn't have enough money on himself right now to pay for the flight, and since he didn't own a coil either to make cashless payments, there was no way for Clear to follow Mink further.

Going back from where he had come from, Clear pondered if it would be a good or bad idea to keep track of Mink further, aside from the monetary aspect that stood between him and his goal. Mink was a man with a strong will, so he probably would do what he had tried to do before, meaning taking his own life after having paid his respects to his dead family members. Even though Clear had spoken to him, he was very unsure whether his words had actually reached Mink and he felt his chest grow tight when he thought about what might happen if Mink wouldn't consider living on. For some reason Clear felt the sudden urge to make sure Mink wouldn't take his life as soon as he arrived at his destination. He just wanted to watch over him for a while after he would arrive at his home country, and if Mink really wanted to go through with what Clear feared him to to do, then maybe he could talk to him again. Maybe Mink would have settled down a little after having time to think on his own and going through with facing his past. But Clear was also quite sure that Mink would be very hurt upon being reminded of his loss, the loss of people important to him.  
Clear had suffered that kind of loss once already, when the gentle old man that had taken him in years ago would just simply stop breathing in his his sleep to never wake up again. It had been a terrible kind of pain to be felt and when Clear considered the possibility to have to go through that kind of pain more than once he was at a complete loss of how to deal with it. Mink had said he had lost his family and a family usually consisted of a father, a mother, a child and some grandparents. Maybe Mink had been in the position of the child or of the father, but whatever role he had played in his family and however big it might have been, to loose all of their members must have felt beyond painful for Mink. And now Mink wanted to follow them and join them in death as well.

Suddenly Clear's mind was completely made up. He would follow Mink to his home and prevent him from taking his life. It might be an egoistic thing since Clear seemed to rate life higher than Mink, but he still wanted Mink to stay alive, even if it might be painful. Taking your own life after having lost so many living beings already just felt so wrong to Clear.

But there was still the issue of getting a flight ticket without any money to spent. Clear sighed and thought about how he might get his hands on something, but the only thing he knew that would earn him money was working, but two hours were probably not enough time to achieve this goal. Then he remembered that he had gotten monthly pocket money from his grandfather when the old man had still been alive and Clear had never used it much for anything. Clear had no memory of how much money he might have collected over the years, only remembering a few jars of cash money in his old room at his grandfather's house. Without any other option, though, it seemed the best idea to just go back and count it. The next best idea was to try passing himself as an item of luggage and to stow away on board, but Clear felt bad about that, because it would be kind of like lying - not to mention that nobody would take a human sized piece of luggage an board of a plane anyway.

Clear worriedly looked at the old wristwatch he had inherited from his grandfather and which still ticked on despite its old master's time having come to a halt already. Two hours weren't much to make the distance between Platinum Jail's airport and his home twice. Clear would have to hurry. The rooftops of Midorijima would have to help him make his way around.

* * *

Now getting to his home hadn't been a problem for Clear, neither had been finding the half a dozen jars filled to the brim with pocket money, even if their bottles had gotten a bit dusty over the years. But Clear presumed he was low on time to count all of it and therefore decided to just bring all of the money with him. Each jar the seize of a small barrel corked tightly and packed into a large cloth to be thrown over his shoulder Clear looked like some out-of-season Santa Claus as he made his back back over the rooftops of Midorijima - the added weight making for a lot of noise and slowed him down a little.

* * *

The lady behind the airport counter didn't know if she should be delighted to see the white-haired man with the gas mask on his face but a gentle voice from before, back upon having decided to buy a ticket after all, or if she should be utterly terrified at the fact that he intended to pay in cash stashed in half a dozen oversized glass jars. The business-like smile she had plastered on her face was about to break at any given moment, leaving her either laughing hysterically at the sheer idea to be expected to count this insane amount of pocket change, or for her to end up in a crying fit, because money was money, no matter how small the yen coins were and she had to take it if the customer wanted to pay with it.  
Clear didn't really understand the problem and tried to reassure her that, according to his estimation concerning the volume of the containers he had brought the money in with him and even under the assumption that all of the coins stashed in there might be worth the smallest amount possible - meaning 1 Yen - it should mathematically still be enough money to buy the ticket. And he wouldn't mind leaving her with the rest of the money for her troubles at all.

The people in line behind Clear began to get unsettled and to complain that they, too, wanted to buy tickets and to catch their flight and the poor woman's facial expression began to slip towards sheer panic, before a coworker of hers excused herself from her place for a moment and headed over towards her. Having seen the problem from her own seat behind the neighboring counter already, she tried to shake some sense back into her colleague and told her to get a certain something from the backroom behind the counters. Springing back to life as if redeemed from all evil, the lady hurried to get what she had been told and returned a moment later with a machine originating from ancient times when most people still carried hard cash around with them instead of simply paying with their coils - it was a thing designed to exchange money. When Platinum Jail had been built over a decade ago, Toue probably had ordered for at least a few of those machines to be set up for the richer residents of Midorijima, who hadn't been fond of the idea to place all their hard earned money to be exchanged for virtual currency yet. The airport staff lady explained to Clear that he machine's usage was simple: Just put your money in the form of either coins or paper inside the right slot of the machine and it would count it and then give out a plastic card where the money would be stashed on virtually for the time being. Those credit cards still could be used instead of coils to pay with even now, working similar to prepaid cards. The poor woman had difficulties lifting up the heavy jars filled up with hard currency however, so Clear assisted her in feeding the machine.  
It took a while until the display of the machine hit a number high enough to cover the costs of Clear's flight and the woman just trying to do her job had to feel stabbed to death by glares of the people still waiting in line behind Clear more than once. Some men even got verbally abusive towards the lady, but Clear indicated to be polite towards each other instead and when somebody tried to hit him, he caught the man's fist swung at him with ease and made it pretty clear who was the stronger one between the two of them by just squeezing down tightly a bit - well a little more then just a bit, just enough until the other party cried out in pain and drew back his hand, cursing at Clear, but then keeping his distance in line behind him.

The amount of money being transferred to Clear's temporary card being enough to buy the ticket, he ensured the woman she could keep the rest as change, but she told him that she was instructed never to take any tips, so she kept up pouring in the coins into the money exchange machine down to the last one of them. Clear might have spotted sweat having broken out on her forehead, but he thought it might be due to her being under too much stress from taking so long to serve him as a customer. He never would have contemplated for the lady to simply being scared out of her wits due to a weird gas mask wearing man displaying his strength towards another customer who had tried to strike at him earlier.

Not having any hand luggage to check in, Clear could finally leave the counter with his hard earned flight ticket in one hand and quite a bit of pocket money to spent later on his newly acquired prepaid credit card in the other. He would have preferred to search for Mink first instead, but the time left until his plane would leave had dwindled considerably and Clear thought it more possible to find Mink in a shut-off surrounding like a plane than in an open area of the airport with these many other people all around him.

When Clear's turn came to go through the security control, a man told him to remove his gas mask before he would be willing to feel him up for dangerous items he might carry so he could pass through.

Clear was devastated at the sole idea of revealing his face to others, even more so to a random stranger just demanding it.

He looked at his wristwatch again. He didn't have much time to finish boarding the plane if he still wanted to go after Mink. But if he wanted to follow Mink further he would have to bare his face, the only thing he had been told never to reveal to others by his grandfather.

Clear swallowed hard.

He hadn't been prepared to make such a decision.


	2. Chapter 2

Having to choose between possibly saving another person's life or revealing his most closely guarded secret had left Clear sitting in a corner by the waiting area close to the security checkpoint after declining getting searched by the security man from before. The man had eyed him suspiciously the moment Clear had refused to take off his mask, but had not followed after him when Clear had made his escape while yelling to have forgotten something at the previous counter in lieu of a better excuse.

He sighed behind his mask.

This was awful.

Shouldn't the decision be quite easy, though? Mink's life surely weighed more than Clear showing his face to others, even if he were to scare the other party by removing his mask as he feared it to happen. His grandfather had just been so insistent on Clear promising to him not to remove this thing sitting on his face and hiding his facial features from the world. He surely had his reasons to tell Clear something like that. For him his grandfather's wisdom was something akin to an absolute truth. If he had told him something about the world, Clear had taken it to be always correct. There was no reason to doubt his grandfather's motivations when he had forbidden Clear to reveal his face to others now. There surely must be something very wrong with his own face, Clear was convinced of this to be the truth. He had been told to be different from other people, so he guessed he must look heinous below that mask and preferred to hide his face so as not to disturb other people with his looks.

Unfortunately that also meant that he couldn't take a step further towards the plane waiting for him to board it and the minutes kept ticking away as Clear sat in his corner and was still at a loss what to do.

A few meters away from him was a pile of luggage placed by some nearby group of chairs and a little boy was playing with a superhero figure on his own. The elderly person supposedly watching over him had fallen soundly asleep on one of the chairs next to him. The boy held the toy in his outstretched hand, circling around himself as he made comic-like soundwords up to accompany the superhero on his journey to watch over the good citizens of this place and ward off any evil that might come across his way. He didn't notice the lace on his shoe coming undone as he went and tripped the moment he stepped onto the string, being too distracted by his play to prepare himself for the fall.  
He never hit the floor, though. A man in a white coat with a scarf swinging behind him nearly like a cape had dashed to his side and had caught him in his fall in a split second, when there had been only centimeters between him and the floor.

The boy's eyes widened in wonder.  
A real hero with a black mask on his face had just shown up right in front of him!

Now the situation he had faced just now might not have been something deadly; a hurt knee or the like might have been the result had he hit the floor, but that didn't keep the boy from grinning widely at his super fast savior and grabbing at his white coat in excitement as he was put back on his feet like he wouldn't weigh a thing.

"Are you a hero, mister?", he squeaked in joy and Clear felt flattered and scratched the back of his head as he chuckled.

"Oh, I wouldn't say that. I guess I was just there when you needed some help."

"Isn't that what heroes are doing anyway? Being there for people when they need some help?"

Clear blinked behind his mask and looked towards the boy.  
Suddenly the whole affair with Mink and him having to take off his mask seemed to have such an easy answer.  
Still, he clenched his fists at the prospect of giving up the barrier that had kept his face hidden from the world for so long now.

The young boy looked at him in concern.  
"Is something wrong?"

Clear flinched when he was reminded that he still had an audience and he went down on one knee to pat the boy's head.  
"No, it's alright. It's just that you reminded me of something I must do. There is a friend of mine I need to follow and to do this I have to board this plane. But the security man wanted me to remove my mask before he would let me through and I... hesitated to reveal my face."

"Well, a hero's secret identity is important, right? It must be kept a secret at all costs!"

The boy's eyes sparkled as he spoke and Clear was unsure why he was thought of by the little one as a hero when all he had done was to keep him from falling to the floor. He rose from his half-kneeing position and looked towards the security area while letting out a sigh.

"There seems to be no way for me other than to remove my mask if I want to save my friend, though."

Clear tried to quieten down his inner struggle to go this far and kept saying to himself that he did this for Mink, not to scare other people with how he looked or to break the promise to his grandfather. This was an important mission and he knew it. He tried to collect all of his strength to finally lift his hands towards the buckles fastening the gas mask to his face, when the little boy tugged at his coat.

"I think I know a way to get you past the guard without you having to remove your mask, Mr. Hero."

"Eh?"  
Clear thought he had misheard what the boy had said at first, but the little guy lost no time to elaborate further after he gestured for Clear to squat beside him so that only he could hear what he had to say.

"I've made my dad pass through security control by this method before. It would mean for me to become a bad boy for a while, but I think sometimes the end justifies the means, right?"

The kid seemed unusually serious for his age and his view on how the world worked baffled Clear. He only tilted his head in confusion.  
"And what do you intend to do?"

"That is a secret, but we will play a game and you have to play it with me. If we succeed your identity will not be revealed."  
There was some kind of a conspiratorial aura about the little boy that astonished Clear, but he was interrupted in his thoughts as the little man motioned for him to follow him to the pile of luggage next to the sleeping old lady on her chair. The boy rummaged in one of the bags and produced the flight tickets of his family, holding them in front of Clear.  
"These are the tickets that we need to board the plane. Mommy has told me over and over again that they are in here and that nobody is to forget where she put them."  
He held out the tickets to Clear.  
"One of them is for my daddy and one of them is for me. I cannot read which of those is which yet, but with these you can pose as my dad and we can board the plane together."

"But then your father won't have any ticket for himself.", Clear stated, but earned a shaking of his head from he boy.

"You tried to board the plane before, right? Then you have a ticket of your own. Just switch yours with my dad's and then it's fine."

Clear hadn't thought about this. This kid's logic was even a little frightening to him. He wouldn't have come up with such an idea by himself, but if there was no risk of the boy's father not being able to board the plane later, Clear didn't see much harm in exchanging tickets for this plan to work. He disliked the idea of having to lie towards the security guard, but if the kid's scheme would succeed, he could spare the people on the airport the look at the terror that his face was most likely to be without his mask. And another look on his wristwatch ensured him that he didn't have much time left to board the plane Mink was probably on already. Letting out a sigh through his nose, Clear took his flight ticket out of his coat pocket and exchanged it with one of the tickets reading "adult, no discount" and put all of the other tickets the boy had handed to him back in the bag they had come from, aside from the one that was labeled as "reduction for children" and most likely belonged to the boy.

"Your mask doesn't look very hero-like.", he heard the boy say as he grabbed for his hand and lead the way towards the security checkpoint they were nearest to, "But I still think it looks cool. It's like from one of those movies my mom forbade me from watching where they throw these things around that explode into a cloud of smoke before they charge in and attack or something."

Clear couldn't deny that the original usage of his gas mask was in fact to save its wearer from inhaling harmful substances. But it also covered his whole face up, so he guessed that was why his grandpa chose this item for him to wear after he had most likely found it on the junkyard they had lived close by to.

"Well then, here goes, Mr. Hero.", the boy stated when they had arrived at the security checkpoint. "We will play house and you'll be my dad for now, okay?"

Clear nodded and the boy who had appeared to be almost too silent for a kid his age suddenly went wild like crazy and yelled in a loud voice all the while.  
"Lift me up, daddy! Lift me up!"

Clear complied to the boy's wishes without any hesitation and after having him on his shoulders - and the security guard's attention on the both of them from the loudness appearing in front of him now - they made their way towards the man in uniform.

"Yay! Yay! I'm high up! Now the zombies won't get me!", the boy shrieked and appeared to be in his own little world despite his surroundings. He kicked his legs into the air as far as Clear's hold onto his thighs and knees would allow it, making it a bit difficult for Clear to hold his balance and let him sway from right to left quite a bit in an attempt to keep the kid steady on his shoulders.

The man glanced from Clear towards the boy and back, making a face as if he wondered whether this strange man with the gas mask really was the father of that kid. But the way the boy behaved so unruly but without any fear led him to the conclusion that they must be parent and son after all.  
"I see you have no hand luggage, Sir, but do you carry around any dangerous items with you?"

"I-", Clear wanted to explain, but the kid on his shoulders went quite wild and he had to steady his posture a few times before he could go on with what he was saying, "I am sorry, I have my hands full at the moment. Would you be so kind as to check my coat pockets? I believe I am carrying a hunting knife with me at the moment."

The security guard and the boy both flinched at Clear's statement, but before the guard could say anything, the kid immediately thought up something to cover up for Clear.  
"Boo! Daddy is a scatterbrain again! You always tell me that no knives are allowed and then you forget to take yours out of your pockets! And it's so long since we went to the camping trip where we needed it, too! Daddy is always so forgetful!"

Clear huffed a sheepish laugh towards the guard, getting that he had slipped up and the boy had just saved his neck, but his embarrassed expression was hidden by the gas mask sitting on his face and the thing was partly taken hold onto by the boy sitting on his shoulders at the moment, too.

The security guard seemed to be convinced that the fact that Clear was carrying a hunting knife was not on ill intend, though, and he had told him about it, so he began searching Clear's pockets for the item.  
"I must inform you that I will have to confiscate this before you board the plane, Sir. It is not allowed to bring any weapons on board."

"I understand.", Clear stated, but was busy with trying to keep the kid on his shoulders again as the boy had begun to loudly play with his action figure while loosely holding onto Clear's head with his other hand and leaning backwards quite dangerously. He briefly wondered if he should really be worried for the kid's safety, but then thought it was all just an act put up for him to get him through the security check and probably to divert attention from his mask, so he tried to play along as best as he could.

The security guard rummaged in both of Clear's coat pockets and the longer he had to search for the item he was looking for, the more desperate he became with the things he was actually finding instead. By now his loot already consisted of a see-through vinyl umbrella he had no clue how the man could have fitted it into his coat, a pen and paper, some glass marbles and even a neatly folded piece of fabric that turned out to be a frilly apron when he unfolded it. Doubting his own hands when he could finally feel the hilt of the hunting knife at first, the guard then pulled it out and double-checked that he really got everything out of these way too deep pockets of this strange man. Then he patted Clear's pants down to make sure that he didn't carry any other odd objects around, but couldn't find anything suspicious.

"Are we done yet, daddyyy?", the nagging voice of the boy was hearable, while the little man had his fingers clawed into Clear's gas mask and impatiently bobbed up and down and back and forth on Clear's shoulders, displaying a child at the end of his patience perfectly.

"Uhm... I think so?", Clear voiced the question towards the guard, who looked pretty much done with this weird customer that was in front of him.

Art first the guard nodded and Clear was about to leave the security area, when the guard came up to him again and told him to wait for another moment.  
"I need you to take off this mask, too, Sir."

Clear wanted to turn around, but the boy on his shoulders suddenly clamped down on his mask not only with his hands but with his whole upper body, screaming like he was about to throw a tantrum that might go on for hours.  
"NO! NO! NO! Daddy promised to play 'zombie hunter' with me when I'm good and I was good right now, so we will play now! PLAY! We cannot play without the mask! Don't take it off!"  
The security guard tried to reason with the kid but as soon as he tried to speak to him, the boy began to shriek even louder than before!  
"NOOO! I WANT TO PLAY NOW! NOOO!"

He drew the attention of pretty much any bystander and the queue that had begun to built up behind Clear while he was checked for harmful objects. Theses people had been annoyed by the boy's behaviour for quite a while now and shot deathly glances towards Clear as the supposed father not being able to tame his kid and at the guard for keeping them wait for so long and attempting to even elongate their suffering further now by holding back the passenger he seemed to have just waved through a second before.

Clear tried to rock the boy on his shoulders by stepping from one feet to the other and by telling him to be a good boy until they reached the airliner, all the while hoping that it still would work and he didn't have to unmask himself after the boy had tried so hard for him already. Then the security guard finally gave in and let them go their ways with a beaten look on his face and they could move on to finally board the aircraft.

Having made it inside of the metallic bird and being led to their seats by a slightly disturbed stewardess, who didn't know why this white-haired gentleman hid his face like that, they boy dangled his feet from the seat and Clear turned towards him.

"Thank you for your help. I wouldn't have been able to make it through this alone."

The boy grinned at him like a Cheshire cat and and enjoyed Clear patting his hair in return. Then a sudden ring from the small coil on his wrist resembling a wristband caught his attention  
"Oh, it's mommy. I guess she's back from shopping with daddy at the airport and is searching for me now."  
When he took the phone call a very worried woman cried at him that she couldn't find him, and where he was, and what he had been thinking to just get up and leave his grandmother's side like that. Clear winced at the outburst of disbelief towards the boy when he told his mother that he had already boarded the plane because he had been so bored from waiting for them. Having to promise his mother not to leave his seat, the call ended.

"I am sorry that you are going to get in trouble for helping me.", Clear apologized but the boy grinned at him again.

"It's okay. It was my duty as a faithful citizen to help out a hero in need! It's my good deed for today!"  
Clear laughed and ruffled the boy's hair while thanking him again. Then the boy blinked and looked at Clear as if an idea had just crossed his mind.  
"I don't know when my parents will board the plane, but I think you should head over to your seat now. I don't want you to get in trouble, too. And didn't you say you had a friend who needed your help? You should probably look for him now."

Right.  
Clear had nearly forgotten why he had to pull a stunt like getting on a plane in the first place. After remembering his original seat number, he said good-bye to his little helper and walked through the aircraft in his search for Mink. The plane was quite packed with travelers, though, and even if Mink was tall when standing, Clear couldn't see him sitting in any of the seats he passed by and then he was told by a stewardess to take his seat since their take-off was soon to come and he would have to buckle up.  
Sighing, Clear walked towards his seat and told himself that he could always look for Mink after they had landed.

* * *

Taking a ten hours long flight with nothing else to do but to look out of the tiny window of the aircraft next to him, or to chat up the nice old lady sitting close by occasionally was quite the boring task for Clear. Weirdly enough, though, he couldn't remember much about the flight when the airplane landed again, even if he couldn't remember having fallen asleep either during the flight. It was just like with the realisation that there was no immediate task at hand, his half-closed eyes had locked onto the sky while staring out of the window and his mind had shut down as if he had been on some kind of standby mode. Clear couldn't really explain it to himself, so he tried to shrug it off as some weird sleeping-with-your-eyes-open-situation.

When it was time to get off the plane again, Clear thought to have spotted Mink's back of the head for a moment way ahead of himself, but lost him in the upcoming disorder as the people tried to queue up to leave the plane. Trying to catch sight of Mink again during his walk towards the foreign airport was a nearly impossible task with the surge of people all around him and filtering out Mink's steps from all the others was out of the question, too. Clear was still busy trying to find that brunette back of Mink's head he thought to have caught a glimpse of before again, when he was suddenly stopped by two security people stepping in his way.

"I'm sorry, Sir, but we have to pat you down before you can enter the airport.", a female guard told him with a smile, while a male person stepped in front of Clear immediately and was starting to feel his pants and coat pockets up for anything suspicious the next moment. He looked quite questioning at items like Clear's glass marbles or a not so neatly folded frilly apron, but put every item he had extracted from Clear's pockets back when he had found them to be harmless, including his prepaid credit card which seemed the only item of value on the man.

Clear became anxious to loose sight of Mink for good this time and had trouble paying attention to the two people around him, so he barely heard what the woman was saying to him next.

"You will have to allow us to take a look at your face, too, Sir, since we have to compare your facial features to a list of people not allowed to enter our country."  
With that explanation given, she put a video screen hanging from a leverage on the wall right in front of Clear's face and the male guard positioned himself behind him to take off his gas mask in Clear's stead.

Clear barely had any time to realize what was going on and as his eyes darted around in search for Mink, but then he suddenly spotted the small boy who had helped him board the plane earlier waving at him instead, while he and his family checked through security on a neighbouring queue. The moment Clear instinctively was about to reply to the boy waving at him, there was the sudden feeling of something slipping off his head and his view turned dark for a moment, only for his surroundings to come back even brighter lit than before, and the formerly slightly shielded sounds all around him came crushing towards his ears full force now.  
"Huh?"  
All at once he felt like awakening from something kind of a trance as he realized that his field of vision had widened and that his skin could feel the air softly brushing over his face.

Clear exhaled, inhaled, swallowed hard and then gave a yell before he covered his face with his hands immediately and sounded absolutely desperate.

"Don't look at me, please! Don't look at my face!"  
He instantly sank down on his knees, cowering between the security staff, who looked at him in confusion now.

The video screen right in front of his face lit up in a green light and beeped as a sign that his face was not known to be one of a person with refusal of entry and the woman put it out of Clear's way before crouching down beside him and patting his shoulder.  
"Are you feeling alright, Sir? Please excuse our intrusion on your privacy, but we have to do our job."

Clear quivered behind the hands he had slapped in front of his face and only moved his index finger away a bit to allow his eye to make contact with the woman right in front of him, who smiled back at him.  
"Weren't you scared by the look of my face just now?"

The woman blinked in disbelief at Clear's words, but then made the corners of her mouth lift up again.  
"I wouldn't know what I would have to be scared of, I'm afraid, Sir. I only caught a short glance of your face, but I must say you are quite handsome. Did you hide your face because you are famous somehow and didn't want to be recognised by your fans?"

"Eh?"  
Clear couldn't believe what he was asked by this woman.  
Him being mistaken to be famous?  
His face being handsome?  
That couldn't be true. It was impossible.

Yet, Clear found himself rightening himself back up together with the woman and the male security guard held his gas mask out to him to put it back on if he so wanted to now.  
Clear hesitated to take his hands off his face to grab his mask, though, and shot an insecure glance back at the woman still in front of him.  
"There is nothing wrong with my face, are you sure about that?"

The lady looked confused as ever as she lifted one brow in return. Maybe he was one of those odd people who didn't believe themselves to be beautiful or something.  
"Do you want some proof, Sir? I can show you, if you want me to."  
That said, she rummaged in her pocket to produce a small hand mirror and held it in front of Clear's face.  
"Just take a look at yourself, Sir, then you will see."

Clear still didn't dare to take his hands away from his face, but the male guard behind him with his mask still in hand gave a very hearable cough signalizing that he had something else to do today then to wait for some random, odd traveler to take back his stuff and leave the line. Therefore Clear first took one of his hands away to grab for his mask offered to him and then turned back towards the female guard and shyly let his other hand sink down next to his body. Having trouble opening his squeezed shut eyes he finally dared to risk a look at the small mirror held out in front of him.

His eyes widened.  
So this was, how he looked like?  
He saw pink eyes, a nose, a mouth with two small moles under his lips and pale skin overshadowed by white, short curls of hair.  
His face showed all of the parts a normal human face would have to offer and there was no scar or ugly deformation whatsoever.  
He just looked like a normal-

He gasped as a realization washed over him like a wave attempting to crush him.

No, this had to be all wrong.

This was impossible!  
It had to...  
It just...

His lips shivered, then he pressed them together tightly and answered with a strain in his voice lacking all emotions.  
"Thank you very much."  
Then he quietly left the queue for the security check and allowed himself to be pulled along by the crowd heading for the airport's exit.

* * *

What was he even doing here?

Where was the use in being where he was now, surrounded by these many people?

He faintly remembered to have come here for an important task.

What was it again?


	3. Chapter 3

Mink arrived at his old home country with mixed feelings. He had brought some books to read on his long flight from Japan to his destination of course, but he had barely been able to concentrate on their content no matter how hard he had tried. The words the Gas Mask had said to him still rung in his ears, and lingered even after he had disembarked from the aircraft and continued his journey on food now, lost deep in thought.

The bonds he had shared with the members of his former Rib team had been forged by earning their trust and respect either by using force or by talking to them to convince them that they shared his goals of revenge against Toue, simple as that. Being made up of criminals and ex-convicts the description "family" never had crossed Mink's mind when thinking about his team members before. If Mink had to compare his team to anything else, they were probably more like a pack of wolves than a group of humans. They hadn't always been easy to control, sometimes overstepping their bounds and having to be reminded who their head was, including using brute force if other methods were likely to be useless instead. But those same people had shown great concern for him when he had vanished without saying anything to them after Oval Tower had collapsed. They had searched for him and appeared to be almost overjoyed to see him after the Gas Mask had intervened with him taking his own life.

He had disbanded Scratch the next day, telling his former team members to either go on their separate ways or to elect a new leader if they so cared about keeping their Rib team alive even now. Some of his men had been disappointed by Mink's choice, others had just silently respected his decision. Mink hadn't cared much about how they would react. He would have left them not knowing where he had vanished to earlier, but thought they might try to go search for him again if Scratch kept being a team with him as their leader. It had been Mink's way to say good-bye to them before he had packed his belongings and made preparations to enable himself to get on a plane while hiding the fact that he was an ex-convict on the run, since Toue's software might still recognize him as such as soon as he would enter an airport.

And then this white-haired weirdo had shown up in front of him again and despite Mink's warnings not to meddle with his affairs, he had insisted on throwing those useless words at him about caring for his team members as if they were his family now.

Family...

Mink had only one family once, and all of its members were already dead now, save for him. He had cursed every day after Toue had wiped out the lives of so many people Mink had cared about. And Toue had done it for no apparent reason other than to satisfy his scientific curiosity and to feed his own narcissism by showing Mink's tribe that not sharing their secrets to outsiders like him meant immediate death due to being deemed worthless to the man.  
Mink clenched his teeth so hard that his jaw hurt from it as the memory of that day had resurfaced in his mind. Then he spat out on the beaten and barely visible track he was currently following to make his way around the mostly deserted landscape around him.

He still wished that he could have been the one killing Toue, but fate hadn't chosen him to be victorious over that bastard in person. He had tried to confirm the man's death with Aoba, but hadn't gotten much out of the blue-haired guy aside from the info that Aoba had defeated him in a Rhyme match, all of it being accompanied by cries and hiccups, for which he had been reprimanded by Red immediately. Scratch had succeeded in their plan to blow up Oval Tower, though, the tower's main system suddenly giving in on its own for some reason adding to the destructive force being released. Toue had at least been confirmed to be in his office on the topmost floor by Aoba, when the tower crashed and none of the members of Scratch or Benishigure had seen him leaving the building afterwards. So him having ended up crushed to death by the debris after his fighting spirit had been broken by the golden eyed demon child was a very likely conclusion.  
It had been enough, in fact, to lift a heavy weight off Mink's shoulders, because he felt his late family members and comrades, who had died on the order of Toue, to have been avenged sufficiently. Therefore he had thought it time to finally join them and end his journey towards death by preparing himself to take his own life. But then the white-haired gas mask wearing guy had shown up and ruined this moment for him.

The sound under Mink's feet changed from crunching down on sand to a rustling of leafs and dry branches or the occasional appearance of moss below his soles as he made his way through the woods now. He was headed for the only house out here for miles to come. It was a thing made up of wood and effort in an attempt to approve being alive even after all the horror had entered Mink's life. It had proven to be useless the moment Mink had tried to move into it to settle down there, though. He wasn't a man capable of forgetting his own heritage and it spoke to him from every hand-woven fabric hanging from the walls or lying as a carpet on the floor, from every pillowcase, every blanket and every statue and candle used for praying to the old Gods. And of course there was also the known odor of herbs and incense wafting through the rooms. Mink had tried to move on, to live on with the sadness and anger eating at his heart for loosing everything he had held dear in the past. But he simply couldn't do it then. He was unable to forget what had happened, unable to forgive the man responsible for it and unable to forgive himself for not having done something then, anything to prevent all of these lives from being lost.  
Still, the house was the only place he could imagine himself to be able to calm down at, before he would attempt to end the journey that his life was and to face death anew. And to be frank, now that he thought about it, it would feel a little better knowing his body would be in a place where his heart was rooted in, instead of rotting in some foreign country. Not that it mattered much where his mortal remains ended up at, as long as they would rejoin with the soil to serve as a source of new life. Nevertheless the thought of dying here sat more favorable with Mink. He would, however, pay his respects to his late tribe members first and bring back something he had borrowed from them once - an item to strengthen his resolve whenever he might falter on his way to take revenge for them. Now that all was over, he could finally return it to its rightful place.

All of these things had to wait at least until tomorrow, though, since Mink was tired from his flight and the jet-lag hit him quite hard by now.

Putting his bag down by the frontdoor, Mink checked around the house whether there was any of the firewood he had cut before leaving the country was still usable. It had been a few years since he had been here, but the wood seemed to be at least dry enough to burn it, so he took some logs of hardwood and headed back to the frontdoor to enter the house. The lock was somewhat jammed after all this time, though, so Mink had a bit of trouble opening the door.  
Suddenly he felt a stare on his back and turned around, but there was no one to be seen in the woods surrounding his house. It was highly unlikely that anybody would show up here, who didn't know that a house had been built here in the first place. Maybe it had been some kind of animal wondering who had dared to set foot in its territory. Mink shook his head and tried resumed his efforts to open the door with the result of the lock finally giving in and allowing him to enter the house.  
The house hadn't been used for quite some time and even if it wasn't empty of interior - most things had been covered by a cloth - it was bare of any life inside of it. Mink stopped in the entryway for a while, welcomed by old memories and familiar, if weak smells floating towards him as soon as he had closed the door. He would probably not need to use much of what was left inside the house. For now his main concern was to lit a fire so as not to freeze to death during the night and to uncover the couch usable as a seat and as a sleeping accommodation.

* * *

Meanwhile out in the woods a few dozen meters away from Mink's house, two pink, marble-like eyes glistened as the sun was reflected in them. The person clad in white they belonged to had followed Mink ever since he had left Midorijima.  
Having lost sight of him at the airport for a while, Clear had managed to get back on Mink's track after he had snapped out of his temporary state of utter confusion due to having seen his own face for the first time. Since that moment the usually ever present smile on his face, which force had sometimes even bled right through his then worn gas mask and appeared to his conversation partner as some kind of imaginary flowers, had vanished from his facial features. Clear now wore an expression of indifference boarding on sorrowfulness on his unmasked face. It fit with his state of mind best at the moment.

Tailing Mink had been hard on him. When the thought of wanting to save his friend from killing himself had finally been able to resurface in Clear's mind, Mink had been nowhere to be seen. At first he had tried to search for him on his own, but then he had stopped himself to think for a moment and had realized that security was high on the airport and that security cameras were installed practically everywhere. Therefore he had headed over to the surveillance room - it had been quite a hassle to find that place - and since the guards on duty wouldn't give him the information he was searching for on their own free will, even after he had asked nicely, he had to use a bit of force to send them to a short nap. He had then looked at the monitors and searched the videos until he finally spotted Mink on one of the screens. He had known two things for sure then: Mink had not boarded another plane, but had been headed for the exit and, according to the time displayed on the monitor, he had left the airport by now. He had not been that much ahead of Clear, though, since the surveillance room happened to be located close to the airport's exit and Mink had only left the building a few minutes ago.

Clear had followed after him and had trouble deciding which way to take at first, but then had decided to ask around if anybody had seen a tall man fitting Mink's description. The answer he had gotten the first time was nothing but gibberish to his ears, but then something clicked inside of Clear and he had asked again with the result of the person in front of him seeming to understand now what he had been talking about and their answer made sense to Clear as well then. He had briefly wondered why the language he had used had sounded so foreign to his own ears, but then he had remembered that he was in another country, a country using Latin letters and another official language than Japanese. Yet, he had been able to recreate his own vocabulary without problems right then, as if his brain was using another dictionary than before. He had huffed an ironic laugh at himself. It was that self evident what he truly was then.  
He had thanked the person who had given him the general direction Mink had taken and had sprinted after him until he had been able to see the back of his head again. Then he had reduced his speed and followed Mink in a distance where he might not be spotted immediately should Mink turn around, but which still had enabled him to catch the sound of Mink's footsteps in the distance. The fact that Clear was even able to hear him this far had let him smirk and shake his head. Why had he never noticed this before? It was so obviously abnormal...

If he had been still in his old mood-set then, he probably wouldn't have cared to make himself noticed by Mink, even if the man probably would reproach him for having followed him this far. But Clear wasn't in the mood to make some friendly conversation at this point. He had a lot of questions swirling in his head, but was quite sure that the person he should ask them to was no longer around, so there was no use in dwelling on answers he was unlikely to ever get now. Most of his questions concerned life as a state of existence and the only person still capable of probably giving him at least some of the answers he sought was about to throw his life away soon.  
Clear had wondered more than once if he should have just stopped tailing Mink, but his feet had still kept following him, no matter how far and where he had went, stepping from sand and stone onto grass and moss and dry branches lying on the ground as he went. Then he had been able to see a house in the middle of a forest and Mink had headed towards it. So Mink did have a real place to return to then, not just a general direction, he had thought. Clear wouldn't have found it odd if Mink had headed straight towards a graveyard instead, though, he somewhat had anticipated it to be honest. But there Mink was: arriving at an accommodation to live in rather than to die there - though Clear knew firsthand that a person could die inside of a house pretty easily as well.

* * *

He knew that Mink had wanted to pay his respects to his people first and to take his life afterwards, so the chances of him killing himself inside of his own home at this point in time seemed rather low. Clear wondered if he should ask to be let in by Mink, but decided against it. He sat down on an half overgrown tree stump instead, which enabled him to keep one eye on Mink's house while he waited for things to happen. Maybe Mink would reconsider taking his life on his own, without needing Clear's intervention. Clear's facial features darkened as he tried to remind himself of his reason for not simply letting Mink decide what to do with his life on his own. The concept of value concerning a person's life just seemed to have slipped from his grasp at the moment.

Why exactly was it so bad if another person's life ended anyway? Was is bad at all?  
Clear's evaluation on that subject had something to do with how he had felt when the old man he had lived with for quite some time had ceased to be and left him all alone. He had been so lonely then, a feeling he never wanted to experience again. Therefore his arguments towards Mink as to why he shouldn't throw away his life had been to think about the feelings of his comrades, his family, the people caring about him. They would feel left behind if Mink died, they would be sad, therefore ending his own life was a bad thing, simple as that. But now that Mink was here, there was nobody around besides Clear who would care if Mink's life simply ended the next day. Nobody would know, so nobody would mourn him. His gang members might wonder where he had gone off to, but they might never know their leader died. If there was nobody to grieve, was dying by choosing to do so that bad a thing then?

Clear had trouble deciding on that. The thing that hampered his train of thoughts the most was the fact that he had lost the concept of what "being alive" meant in the first place ever since he had seen his own face in that mirror. At that very same moment he had suddenly realized that the face looking back at him hadn't been one of a kind. In fact, it had been one amongst many, many more with the same facial features as him. He had no twins, though, he had duplicates. Things that looked exactly like he did; same face, same stature, probably even the same voice as him - if not then still a voice that could be used as a weapon to make people go crazy upon hearing it. That's what he had been made for, why somebody had bothered to put his parts together, to create him; he was a man-made thing, a machine. Seeing his own reflection in that mirror had triggered all of that knowledge inside of him at once, as if a veil had been lifted from his eyes. But it had left him partially blinded, too. He had never questioned being human. But now things that once seemed clear as day to him suddenly felt vague and things he never thought to query were shaking up his very being. His self-perception had just crumbled.

What exactly was he?  
No, wrong question, he knew what he was, but why was he?  
No, he knew that, too, his purpose was pretty much clear, but was that all? Wasn't there more to his existence than that?  
Was he just some kind of weapon to control people with brute force, and nothing more?  
Or something to blend in among humans, to imitate them even down to being usable as a sex toy if necessary?  
Or was he just a thing to toy with people's hearts by using his voice to bent them to his master's will?

He didn't even have a master anymore.  
The person he should have called "master" was gone now already, and the person he kept calling master instead was a... a...  
Well, what exactly was Aoba? A fraud? No, that wasn't it...  
It hadn't been Aoba's intention to be registered by Clear as his master after all, he hadn't acted like it.  
A wrong decision on his part?  
Why had his recognition been wrong in the first place?  
Why hadn't he been with his true master Toue?  
Why hadn't he been with the dozens of brothers he remembered he had, who were built the same as him?  
Why had he been always so alone?  
The person he had called his "grandfather", who was he really?  
They had lived close by a dump, so had he been... dumped, too?  
Was he just a piece of junk?

His whole existence had become one huge question mark for Clear, and there was nobody providing any answers for him.  
He could feel something wet sliding down his cheeks and slid one of his gloves off to inspect it further.  
What was it? Tears?  
Weren't tears reserved for humans to express an emotion described as sadness or despair?  
If so, why did anybody even bother enabling him to spill tears?  
He wasn't human after all.  
If anything, he was a bad copy of a human.

He couldn't stop the tears streaming down his face for the next hours to come.

* * *

The night was cold out there in the open and Clear shivered since the sun had set and left him without warmth. He was still wearing his usual attire, a long lab-like, white coat topped by a yellow scarf, with a shirt below it followed by gray, baggy pants and almost knee-high, white boots. But those kind of clothes were still not enough to keep the cold from engulfing him, the layers were too thin, the shirt too short. He smiled at himself that he was even programmed to shiver, since this humanly rhythmically repetitive contraction of different groups of muscles to generate body heat was pretty useless for a machine like him. He might possess something similar to muscles when it came to force transmission or the providing of movability, but using it to reheat himself? He was pretty sure that he wasn't even cold, his temperature management worked flawlessly after all, so that his functions wouldn't be impaired by his surroundings. But whatever sensors he might possess to measure temperature with, they signaled that it was "cold" outside, so the right thing to do was to "shiver" - he was a thing made to copy human behaviour after all to blend in with them perfectly.  
The tears that had finally stopped just a few minutes ago began to form anew in his eyes and Clear wiped them away and tried to force himself not to think about this so much. But he was alone and had nothing else to do but to wait and think, it was useless.

Looking back at Mink's house, the man was still awake, judging by the faint light emitted from behind the curtains. Clear briefly wondered if he should ask him whether he could stay over at his place for the night after all. But even if Mink would be willing to let him in, what would he do tomorrow, or the day after that? He hadn't even thought about any of this when he had boarded that plane and followed Mink to his home country. This was not Midorijima, there were no houses he could sleep inside of. His home wasn't there either. The house he had lived in with this grandfather had not been big, but at least it had provided a roof to sleep under. Out here there was nothing save for Mink's house and the forest. But a forest afforded little protection against coldness or rain - Clear was thankful that it didn't rain right now. He hadn't thought far enough.  
Well, he probably would be fine until tomorrow, but what would happen then? If Mink tried to commit suicide again Clear was still set on keeping him from succeeding. But what if he managed to save Mink from throwing away his life this time again? There was no telling whether he wouldn't try later, when Clear wasn't by his side. Mink had come all the way to his home country just to die here after all. And even if Mink would reassure him not to take his life ever again, what exactly would Clear do afterwards? He faintly remembered to have seen a village on his way to Mink's house - Mink had walked around it, but it was the nearest place for people to live at out here.

Maybe Clear could live there, too, some day? But what would he do there? You had to earn money to live in some place, he knew at least this much, but it was a thing that had never concerned Clear up until now. The house of his grandfather had simply always been there as far as he had been involved. Could he even work? Would they let a machine like him work with them? Would they accept him? It was probably better to deceive them and not even tell them that he wasn't human in the first place like he had done it back in Midorijima. But it had been different then. Clear hadn't mean to lie to anybody about what he truly was then, he simply hadn't known, hadn't remembered, hadn't even questioned it. Being sure about himself had enabled him to open up to people, to approach them with an open mind. But ever since Clear had learnt what he truly was he feared to be rejected by society. No, to be honest he had always have that fear, it just had been concentrated on his face, not on his entire being. The fear of becoming and outcast had always lingered inside of him since he had known that he was different from others by his grandfather.

Would Mink accept him?  
Would he accept words from a machine telling him not to take his life, when technically said machine wasn't even alive itself?  
What did Clear even understand about being alive?  
What was it that made you being "alive" in the first place?  
Was it just the fact that humans were something organic?  
Was it the fact that they could die that made them alive?  
Was death really so bad then?

Questions, questions, tons of questions and nobody to answer them.  
He felt more lonely then ever before.

* * *

The light behind Mink's window went out.  
He must have gone to sleep now.  
Sleep.  
Sleep might be a good idea.  
Clear was unsure that he could sleep, though.  
The closest state to being asleep he could manage was probably going on standby mode.  
He bit his lower lip.  
He had liked it better when he still had thought that sleeping was possible for him.


	4. Chapter 4

When Mink awoke in his old home, his mind first wasn't willing to connect to what his eyes would show him, which left him in a short state of denial as to where he was. But then he remembered having come here yesterday and the reason having motivated him to this decision. He rose up from the sofa with a low groan, having not rested very comfortably during the night and long forgotten nightmares of the day his life had turned into hell haunting him during his sleep.  
He needed some coffee now, badly. Thankfully that was something he had thought on packing in his bag before he came here. He got up and left the house to get some logs of coniferous timber from his stack of wood to use in the kitchen range.

As soon as he had stepped out of his door however, there it was again, that feeling of being watched he had experienced yesterday as well. He craned his neck, but could neither see nor hear anybody being there. Even if his assumption of the other day had been the wrong one, and it was no animal but a person watching him instead, he wondered what a stranger might want from him out here. His house hadn't been broken into and it hadn't seemed like anybody else had tried to make it their home during the time it had been empty either. A thought of simply asking whether there was anybody out there crossed Mink's mind, but was scrapped immediately. He didn't really care if anybody crept around these woods. He wouldn't even care if said somebody was out here to kill him for some reason - that would just speed things up for him, even if it would interfere with his original plans to a degree. Letting out a sigh he made his way back inside to heat up his stove and brew himself some coffee.

* * *

Clear was still sitting on the tree stump close to Mink's house. He had been awake, or rather fully activated since sunrise. It hadn't even been that long since then now, Mink appeared to be an early riser. But the man didn't seem to make his way towards any kind of graveyard as of yet. He had only collected some firewood and had vanished back inside his house again. He might be aware of Clear's presence, though, since he had looked around himself quite intently. But Clear was not that easily to spot where he sat and too far away for human eyes to recognize him as a person. Clear's eyes had no trouble making out Mink, though, and even if that had been the case, his ears wouldn't have missed the sounds he had made while moving around. With Mink not going out yet, though, Clear was back to face nothing but his own thoughts again. The beauty of the forest around him he had tried to take in since he had woken up only lasted so long and Clear didn't dare to leave his place in fear of missing Mink.

* * *

A short while afterwards, Mink's door opened again and the man left his house with a small bag slung over his shoulder. He headed behind his house at first, but reappeared in front of it only a moment later before he set out towards his destination.  
Clear finally got up from where he had sat this whole time and followed Mink's footsteps. His ears picked up a gentle flapping of wings from somewhere, but he paid it not mind, since there were a lot of animals living in these woods and Clear's only objective was not to loose sight of Mink's back for now.

The tall man soon left the forest and headed towards some mountains. Mink was walking slowly but determinedly, pacing oneself while his eyes occasionally wandered around as if he would recognize a particular detail of his surroundings.  
Clear had left quite a bit of distance between himself and Mink, like he had done it when he had pursued him before. When his turn came to leave the forest to step onto a rocky underground onto a path leading up a mountain he realized that Mink might see him this time for sure, if he were to turn around. Tailing Mink from the airport towards his home had given Clear the cover of Mink not knowing that he was followed then. But now Mink had recognized a presence besides his own twice before already, so chances were that he would spot Clear some time or another. Clear was fine with it this time, though. It was very likely that Mink was heading for the place to commit suicide and Clear planned to stop him then anyway, so he would have to reveal himself sooner or later.  
Having gone up the mountain for quite some time, Mink suddenly stopped and paused for a moment. Then the fluttering of wings Clear head heard before became louder when a bird soared over his head in the sky and landed on Mink's shoulder. It was a beautiful, white-pink Major Mitchell's Cockatoo, Mink's Allmate.

Mink then spoke to the person standing a good dozen meters behind him without turning around.  
"How long do you intend to follow me around?"

Clear continued on his way towards him until he was only a stone's throw away from him, before he finally gave him an answer.  
"Until I'm sure you won't throw your life away, Mink-san."

"I wouldn't have expected you of all people to follow me, Gas Mask."  
Mink said as he turned around and a faint expression of annoyance upon the revelation who his pursuer was flitted across his facial features. But the second Mink realised that the nickname for the white-haired guy didn't befit his image anymore, and his eyes perceived Clear's face that had been hidden behind his mask until now, his expression hardened significantly and the words rolling from his tongue then were cold as ice.  
"Or shall I rather call you 'robot' now?"

Clear's eyes widened.  
How did he know? He had hoped to stay friends with Mink based on the other's assumption that he was still human. But now Mink told him that he knew what he was already? How was that possible and why was he looking at him with so much hatred in his eyes now? Clear knew Mink's angry expressions already, he had seen them sometimes during their mission in Platinum Jail, but this was more than just anger, it was disgust, loathing, even something like a newly kindled fury that spoke out of Mink now.  
Clear couldn't help himself from noticing a stab to his heart - or whatever might exist inside of him in its place. His chin quivered and he pressed his lips into thin lines. His eyes began to water as he looked back towards Mink.  
"Since when did you know what I was, Mink-san? You never said a word."

Mink's brows furrowed deeper and his fists clenched while he looked back at him with ice-cold eyes.  
"You revealed it to me just now, since you're not wearing that gas mask anymore. I know that face of yours, it's the same like that of those damn machines, those Alphas, under Toue's command. They were the ones singing that hellish tune and drove my half-crazy while I was their captive. Now it's no miracle to me anymore how you can possess such inhuman strength as well."

Clear made a step backwards with insecurity plastered all over his face. What had his brothers done to Mink? Had they used their Dye music on him? Had it been painful for Mink?  
"I... I am sorry what happened to you, Mink-san, I had no idea..."  
That was all that left Clear's shivering lips. He really had now clue how to approach Mink anymore.

Mink eyed him suspiciously and the bird on his shoulder cocked its head as if to muster Clear on its own.  
"Don't tell me Toue is still alive and you were told to track me down to take me back? Is that why you are here and were so insistent on me not to kill myself?"

"Eh?"  
Clear's face spelled confusion all over it. How had Mink even managed to assume any of those things? Was he really that mistrusting towards him now? What had Toue done to him for Mink to watch him with such hateful eyes?  
"I am sorry, I don't know what you are talking about, Mink-san. I have not been with Toue since... I don't know whether I have ever been with Toue to be honest. The only person I remember ever being with is my late grandfather, the person whom I stayed with in Midorijima. We lived together by a junkyard. I think I have been... thrown... away, because there... must be something... wrong with me..."

Thinking up something like this as a possible scenario was one thing, but saying it out loud as if to make it a reality led to Clear's voice cracking and his body shivering while he appeared to be utterly crestfallen. He hadn't wanted to tell Mink any of those things, but more than the fact of having likely been abandoned by his old master a long, long time ago, was the prospect of Mink hating him for what he was now, too. He hadn't been with Toue, he hadn't been an evil machine, and he had never engaged into a fight against humans for other purposes than to defend himself if he was attacked first. He had not used Dye music either, the only sort of music that he allowed to come out of his mouth was a song he had thought up while still being with this grandfather and it contained nothing but peaceful images.

"Mink-san, please believe me. I have no ill intentions towards you. The only thing I want is that you do not take your life. You are my friend, Mink-san, so I don't want you to die."  
Those were his honest feelings and he hoped that they would reach Mink while the tall man peered hard at him as if to stare right into his very soul - if he possessed something like that.

Mink didn't say anything for a long while, apparently thinking quietly. Then he moved his hand to signalize his Allmate to take off into the air for a little while before he closed the distance between the two of them and cupped Clear's chin with one hand.

"Mink-san?", Clear asked him with a baffled look on his face.

Mink remained silent while his stare still bore into Clear's pinkish eyes, but the anger and disgust in his eyes slowly began to fade away it seemed. If anything he seemed to look at Clear somewhat inquisitive, as if he wanted to reassure himself about something. Then he broke eye contact, closed his eyelids and leant forwards to take in a deep breath of Clear's smell while appearing to concentrate his whole attention onto his senses.

Clear didn't know what he should make from that but kept staying still and waited for Mink to reopen his eyes.

"You still smell the same as before.", he stated and the hatred in his eyes had finally vanished completely. "It's like a clear sky or a lake without any ripples on its surface. It's neither life nor death, just something akin to clarity."

Clear blinked and slightly tilted his head as soon as Mink let go of his chin again.  
"Is that a good thing?"

Mink's facial features softened a bit when he answered him this time, even if his face still remained the same basic sternness as per usual.  
"It shows me that you do not lie when you tell me that you're not involved with Toue. Toue's machines had a smell of emptiness about them, of nothingness like a deep pit. It was disgusting."

Clear simply took note of Mink's comment towards him and was thankful that he was no longer categorized as something evil from the man's perspective, even if his definition of "smell" was something he couldn't align with the usual meaning of the word.  
"I am sorry for not telling you what I was before, Mink-san. You might not believe this, but I had no clue myself. I always had thought to be human, I had never questioned it. But then somebody took my mask off, showed me my face and suddenly I realized it."

"Is that why you aren't as chipper as before?"

Clear gave a small jerk and looked Mink in the eye again. Had the man just asked him that to cheer him up, or was he misinterpreting his words and the way the other's voice had sounded somewhat warmer than before? Clear gave him a sad smile in return and his brows furrowed in desperation when he answered him.  
"I feel like... I have lost myself. I don't know what, or who I am anymore. It's like everything has crumbled inside of me."

"I see.", Mink answered curtly and then turned around on his heels to climb the mountain path some more.  
When he didn't hear Clear's footsteps behind him, he stopped and allowed his flying Allmate to settle on his shoulder once again, before he spoke without bothering to turn around.  
"I'm on my way to make me remember who I used to be as well. You can join me if you'd like to."

Clear's face lit up instantly now that he had been given permission to follow Mink officially and he made a few fast steps to close up to Mink.

* * *

They walked in silence for the most part with nothing but the sound of their footsteps echoing around them and the occasional intake of a bit more breath by Mink as the air grew thinner the higher they went up the mountain. Then the tall man stopped dead in his tracks at one point, and his eyes took on a sorrowful expression as he let them run over the landscape. The mechanic bird leapt from his shoulders and circled around the area from the sky.

"Is something wrong, Mink-san?", Clear inquired after a while and Mink gave him a long look as if to ponder if it was in his interest to answer Clear's question. But then he sighed through his nose before his voice was heard with quite a bit of strain as he formed words with his lips.

"There is no real sense in telling you any of this. But at the same time there is no harm in you knowing either, since we have come this far already. The land we're passing through now once belonged to my people and the place my village was once standing on is around here."

Clear took in the landscape and tried to imagine any kind of houses standing where only half-dried grass rustled now as the wind blew through it. Some of the trees had weird marks in their barks and Mink went over to the trees and let his fingers slide over the markings, seemingly remembering the reason they were there, but kept silent about it.

Then he turned around and his sky-blue eyes wore pain and sadness in them as Mink recalled what once was there.  
"Our community was small and our lives were peaceful, simple, with not a single convenient device - we didn't need it. We took from nature what we absolutely needed and not more, sharing food supplies among us. That was our way of life back then."

Clear had trouble picturing that way of living as Mink had described it. The only surroundings he had ever known were the ones in Midorijima and what Mink described to him reminded him more of a book he once had read than of reality. In any case it was something that had been lost, that much he knew for sure, and that it saddened Mink to be reminded about it. It made him sad as well, but he couldn't come up with anything to say that would make Mink feel better and it kind of felt wrong for him to speak right now in general. Therefore he kept to simply listening to him and followed him when Mink moved onwards.  
A meadow picked Mink's interest and a faint smile graced his lips for just a moment. He must have found a memory he had been fond of it seemed. But the thought was fast to vanish from his mind again and only a faint whisper of "Nothing left." passed his lips before he continued to walk through the grassland.

The next time Mink stopped was in front of a sparsely vegetated underground that featured a kind of square as if foundations of a house had once been there. Mink sighed heavily.  
"My house stood here once. I shared it with my father, mother and my younger sister."

Clear let out an empathic sound, but didn't know what to say to this again. So Mink had not just one but three members of his family he probably missed dearly. Clear had only lost one person in his life so far and it had hurt beyond compare already. He couldn't even imagine how it would be to loose even more people you cared for. And Mink's family members hadn't been the only ones to die it seemed. There were other remains of houses around here, and Mink had told him there had been other people living here with him back then. And now the only one still left alive was Mink himself. Clear couldn't help himself but to shed tears over so many lives having been lost.

Mink noticed him sniveling and drew his brows together before looking away.  
"You don't have to cry in my stead. They are long gone now."

"But the sadness is still there, right, Mink-san? A loved one is not something to forget so easily.", Clear sniffed and tried to wipe the tears away that rolled down his face.

Mink pressed his eyelids shut and balled his hands into fists for a short moment, but then he let out a long sigh through his nose, forcing down his tension and opened his eyes again.  
"My family and friends have already made their journey towards death. They are now with the Gods and nobody can harm them anymore."

"But what about Mink-san?", Clear asked and gained Mink's attention.  
Clear reached out towards Mink and softly grabbed at his hand, only getting hold of the man's ring finger and pinky in the process, and weakly held onto them. He expected Mink to draw his hand away, but the other man allowed him to touch him for now, his eyes resting on Clear's face, that glistened from the tears still running down his cheeks.  
"Would you allow me to sing a song for you, Mink-san? Don't worry, it's not Dye music. It's something that my grandfather once taught me."

Mink didn't didn't give his consent but simply allowed Clear to do what he wished to do by not stopping him, even though he seemed wary what the result of the robot's song would be.

Clear took a deep breath before a calming and enchanting serenade poured from his lips, which told from jellyfish gently swaying in the sea. It was almost like a lullaby and Mink could feel his tension and frustration ease away while Clear's voice was accompanied by the gentle rustling of leaves and blades of grass all around them, as if nature wanted to join in with Clear's singing.  
Mink had never heard something as comforting as this song before, much less from a product made by Toue, which he only knew to harm him down to his very soul. This outcast among his own kin surely was different from the others. It was as if the other androids just looked human, but Clear was the only one to feel human as well. It was hard to describe, but now that Mink thought about it, it fit with the smell of Clear's soul he had taken in earlier. Something vast with neither end nor beginning, but calming all the while, gentle in its depths and light on its surface.

* * *

"Mink-san, are you alright?"

Clear's question shook Mink out of something like a trance he had entered while listening to his song and he looked back at Clear with a subtle undertone of confusion on his features. But then he gave him a barely visible smile accompanied by a small nod.  
"Your singing was nice."

Loosening his fingers from Clear's gentle grip on them, Mink began to walk away from the place where his village once had been and headed in another direction. The cockatoo soaring in the sky above them flapped its wings to follow his master. Since Mink hadn't told Clear not to follow him anymore, Clear went after him as well.  
They walked for quite some time again, silence having settled between the two of them anew as both of them were lost in their respective thoughts while their feet carried them onwards.

* * *

They arrived at an area that was zoned by a few, short wooden poles somehow reminiscent of totem poles, but too worn down to make out distinguishable features. Behind them lay dozens of mounds of earth, each joined by a small stone plate with carvings of the names of the deceased on them. The carvings looked like they had not been done professionally, differing in depth and size as if an amateur had merely wanted for the deceased to be remembered somehow, even if he didn't know how to handle the material correctly, or like he had been pressed for time. It was very likely, that all of the burial mounds and name plates had been made by the same person. At least that seemed to apply to the graves being erected around the same period of time, judging by the state of the earth covering the remains of the people and the state of vegetation having tried to settle on top of it. If Clear estimated correctly, this included the graves of about four dozen people.

Mink hesitated to enter the graveyard at first, but then straightened himself up and gave Clear a look over his shoulder as if to tell him not to follow after him beyond that point. Clear understood him without words and gave him an affirmative nod, but was willing to rush to his side in an instant, if he so much as spotted any kind of a sharp blade or another kind of weapon Mink would turn on himself. The pink, mechanic cockatoo owned by Mink landed on Clear's shoulder this time, as if not daring to join his master either. Clear gave him an understanding smile and stroke it's feathered chest gently with the backside of his index and middle finger. The Allmate simply allowed the touch without a word, but seemed to appreciate it at the same time.

Mink went towards a grave with a special kind of decoration that highlighted the importance of the individual among his tribe resting there. He got down on one knee and produced the red and silver pipe he used to smoke back in Midorijima from the small bag he had been carrying around, along with a small wooden box, a bowl and a lighter. He placed the pipe on top of two protruding parts of the grave decoration that seemed to have been there just to receive the pipe. Then he opened the box, which contained incense of a certain mix made by Mink himself. He put some of the powder into the small bowl and placed it next to the pipe before he burned the incence, allowing the smoke to swirl around and for a variety of scents to ascend together with it. Then he looked like he was praying.

Clear watched Mink from the distance and felt terribly out of place, as if he shouldn't be here during Mink's private moment. Yet he feared to take his eyes off of the other's back, so he tried to wait patiently for Mink while he paid his respects.

And then it happened: A metallic, glossy thing like a dagger appeared in Mink's hand and he looked at it as if to consider his decision.

"Mink-san!", Clear whined with a pressed voice as he took first one, then another and then a lot of more steps until he could reach Mink's side, silently apologizing to whichever spirits he might anger by his intrusion on their graveyard. Mink's Allmate bird had taken off from Clear's shoulder the moment the other had entered the graveyard and was flying in the sky once more.  
"Please don't do this."

Mink looked up at him with the dagger resting on his palms while his right hand only sightly curled around its hilt like he might either strike at himself or let go of it completely the next moment.  
"What would you say what life is for you, robot? How would you define somebody, who is alive?"

Clear swallowed hard and was afraid that he would not be able to come up with a satisfying answer.  
What was life? How could he ask that to somebody who technically had never been alive from the start?  
According to the definition of being alive, it meant something along the lines of being able to do metabolism, to create energy, to regulate yourself, to produce offspring and to grow. But Clear doubted that Mink wanted to hear any of these things. He was pretty sure Mink sought a more spiritual answer from him, like a philosophical approach of some sort.

Clear swallowed again nervously, his tongue wetting his lips, but no words came out of his open mouth.  
He didn't know what to say, how to form arguments right now.  
He didn't even know why he existed the way he did it in the first place right now, how should he defend another person's existence in that state?  
His chin quivered, his voice trembled and his desperation grew with every second that ticked by.

In the end he reached out towards Mink's hands to cover the dagger with his own shaky fingers while he hoped that Mink would reconsider what he was most likely about to do, even if he might not find the right words just now.  
"The only... way I ever felt alive was... by feeling emotions awoken inside of me when being with other people, Mink-san. It made me happy to see how they would laugh, it made me sad to see them full of sorrow. I enjoyed their voices surrounding me, their gestures speaking to me instead of their words. I admired their creativity to find solutions to a problem and the fact that they would help each other out when they were in a pinch. For me life is spending time with other people and something that continuously flows towards an end. There will be an end, it's inevitable, I've witnessed that already. But the important thing is what you do as long as you are still among the living."  
Clear looked back at Mink, who hadn't moved while listening to him and was still staring into the far distance.

Then the other man finally opened his mouth to speak to him again.  
"I've been dead ever since my family was killed by Toue."

Clear bit his lip and felt himself panicking some more.  
"But your heart's still beating inside of your chest and you're still breathing, Mink-san! How can you describe that as being dead? You are alive! And I want you to stay that way, please, Mink-san! You are still capable of doing things you want to do. Won't you hold onto your life for a while longer?"  
With no immediate reaction from Mink, Clear finally began to cry.  
"Please don't make me bury you next to your family members, Mink-san. I'm sure they wouldn't want for you to die. There's just no meaning in throwing your life away."

Mink sighed deeply and then finally looked Clear in the eye.  
"How about ending my suffering?"

"Eh?"  
Clear was surprised by Mink's new question and tried to read any change of mood on the man's face, but he seemed to be as disconcertingly calm as before.  
"Are you suffering right now, Mink-san? Is it... physically or emotionally?"  
Mink only stared at him and Clear bit his lip harder this time. He had asked on reflex, but the answer was so obvious, he shouldn't even have the need to ask this.  
"No, I know the answer. Your heart must suffer at the moment from the memories awoken and the fact that all these people are no longer here. But still-"

"Why are you so insistent?", Mink asked him another question and his facial features seemed to have softened up a bit.  
"What do you care whether I die or not? We barely know each other."

"You are my friend.", Clear simply stated, but earned a doubting look from Mink.  
"It's true. We fought together side by side when we were on our mission to Oval Tower to help master-err, I mean..."  
Old habits die hard, but calling Aoba master even now felt somewhat natural, so Clear just kept it that way for now and tried to evade the topic.  
"You helped out somebody I cared about, so I cared about you in return and this makes you my friend, Mink-san."

Mink's blueish eyes held onto Clear's pink ones as if he tried to see either truth or lie buried inside of these glass marbles somehow.

"Are you planning to stay here, should I decide to take the longer route on my journey towards death?"

Clear blinked. He hadn't really taken that possibility into account the last time he had thought about what to do should he succeed to make Mink reconsider about taking his own life.  
"Would you allow me to stay with you then?"

Mink smiled at him in an affirmative way.  
He smiled!  
Clear couldn't believe it.

Mink slowly moved his hands below Clear's in a way that made him let go of the dagger and added: "Let's go back, Clear."

Clear hugged Mink on the spot and gave a squeal of happiness before rubbing their cheeks together and chanting "Mink-san! Mink-san! Mink-san!" with an overjoyed look on his face.

* * *

The pink cockatoo soaring in the sky left out a soft sigh at the news that his master seemed to have abandoned his suicidal plans for now. He would have to respect any choice his master would have made, but he preferred the one that involved him staying alive for a while longer.


	5. Chapter 5

It felt somewhat unreal to walk back the path they had come from when Mink had already prepared himself to never see any of this scenery again in lieu of being alive. This morning he had been set on taking his own life and ending his journey towards death by his own hands. But then another person had unexpectedly joined him on his presumably last walk. Thinking about it now he wondered why he had even allowed Clear to follow him then.

Earning the knowledge that Clear was a robot, like the ones Toue had used to torture him back in the days when he had been the man's captive, had been like the revelation of betrayal to Mink. The devastated state of the robot and his unchanged, earnest smell however, had scattered the blinding, upcoming hate towards Clear as one of Toue's products as soon as it had overcome Mink again, though. Mink was a man who judged people based on their actions rather than on their backgrounds, but a robot usually had no soul to dictate its way of acting, it only had parameters to base its actions on instead. And Toue's machines had been made to incorporate with humans, to deceive them and to mimic what they understood as being human, but they had nothing to call a soul. Yet this particular one, who walked in front of him now with a cheerful tune ringing in his throat and chattering away with his Allmate bird in-between, was more human than robot. He even had accomplished the smell of a soul and the scent had almost been entrancing to Mink.  
Mink knew that his own soul reeked of death for a long time now, since the events in his past had led for it to be defiled over and over again until it had been engulfed by death completely. It was a dark and heavy kind of smell that clung to him, maybe that had been the reason he had been so enraptured by the contrasting smell of Clear's soul, which spoke of clarity, light and positivity.

But the white-haired odd one had suffered from the fact that he wasn't human and if Clear had told him the truth, then that knowledge had hit him just recently. Loosing your identity from one day to another was something Mink could relate to. He had experienced something similar, when he was suddenly the only person left of a whole tribe and he had felt like the ground had fallen out from underneath his feet.  
Maybe all of these factors had led to Mink giving his consent to Clear following him on his path towards the graves of his late family. They were both lost and on their search for answers from the way life had turned out to be for them, with the difference that Mink had prepared an answer for himself already. But in the end he hadn't executed his original plan.

Walking through the old territory of his tribe, seeing the ruins, seeing the way nature had reclaimed most of what once had stood in its place, how another form of life had begun to find a way among the debris - it had spoken to Mink. His friends and family, they were no longer there, they had moved on as well. Their souls rested with the Gods now. They weren't crying in pain any longer, their bodies didn't bleed or burn anymore, their tears had stopped. They had gone back to the soil to allow new life to hatch in their stead.  
Mink had forgotten that this would happen, when he had buried them by himself back then, every single one of them. His eyes had been unable to stop the tears flowing out of them, his body had been screaming under the strain of too much earth to be moved out of the way and his head had been aching from the memories resurfacing of every person whose name he had carved into the stone plates. When he had laid them to rest among the earth then, he had seen each of their faces and their broken bodies in the horrible state they had been left in after the shooting and the fire, and it had kindled nothing but hatred inside of Mink.  
Sadness, desperation and frustration over his past had accompanied him for a very, very long time afterwards, until he had felt hollowed out from the inside out, as if he was barely able to feel anything at all anymore; things like compassion having moved to the far end of his consciousness. He had felt like he had transformed into something that was and was not himself at the same time. Even the gray coat he wore had become more than an article of clothing to him, like a front to hide behind along with the shackles which weight he could feel even when he wasn't wearing them. There had been other chains binding him then what had been visible from the outside.  
He had been set out for revenge on Toue for the countless lives he had taken and the emptiness he had created in their stead. Mink had felt like his soul had already joined his people on the day their journey towards death had ended, leaving just an empty shell that needed to be gotten rid of as soon as Mink's goal to purge the world of this man's existence was fulfilled.

But there was still enough left of himself to be noticed by a being that acknowledged him as alive, who wanted to be friends with him, who cared despite having no reason to. Clear had told him that he was still living even now, that the state of his body was proof of it, and that there were things he could still achieve in the time he had left before his journey towards death would end naturally. The surprising thing for Mink was, that there had indeed been things coming to mind then. The emptiness in his soul had finally appeared as something that was refillable to him.  
Maybe the incense he had burned today had been part of the trick as well. Mink knew which scent to expect from the herbs he had mixed himself before he had burned them. It had been meant to open up a path to the members of his tribe, to lead him on his journey to join their sides once again. But the smell had been too weak for some reason, the flame as he had lit the incense wouldn't take on the colour he had expected it to do, and the smoke had been unwilling to drift in the way that was preferable to built a bridge. It was like his late tribe members were telling him not to join them yet, as if they had shut the gate from their side and were not willing to unlock it to greet Mink.  
Had he made a mistake when he had mixed the ingredients the night before? Mink couldn't believe to have forgotten the recipe, since he had used incense during his days as Scratch's leader as well, but maybe he had forgotten to add something. He had been pretty tired from the flight towards his homeland, so maybe his concentration had not been the best yesterday. Whatever the reason was that the incense had not been perfect, it had just seemed to Mink like the shaking of a head instead of the nod he had sought. The right time simply had not come yet it seemed.

Mink smiled a thin smile at himself as he watched Clear's back while the android hopped on the pathway in front of him like an overjoyed child. Then Clear stopped short and turned around to wave his hand at him.

"Mink-san! Let's get home fast! I want to cook something for you to celebrate!"

The taller man exhaled through his nose as if to sigh, and kept walking in the same slow pace as before - a barely visible grin was tugging at the corners of his mouth.  
"We'll have to buy ingredients first."

"Eeeh? Is that sooo?", Clear nagged and his face had fallen for a moment at the prospect of not getting what he wanted as soon as he wished for it, but then it lit back up with another smile.  
"Then let's go shopping, Mink-san! Do we head over to the next town to do it? If I remember correctly... it was that way, right?"

Clear pointed towards the forest and Mink took a moment to estimate his guessed direction and then nodded.  
"We can't just randomly take the linear distance, though, since it's easy to get lost around here. Let's head back the way we came from first."

"Alright then.", the white-haired android responded and proceeded to head for the wooden house he only had seen from the outside so far.

The pink cockatoo suddenly decided to land on Clear's shoulder and seemed interested to engage him in conversation.  
"Say, Clear, can you actually cook?"

"Of course I can.", came the straight answer adorned with a smile, "I've often cooked for my grandfather and he always praised my cooking, so I'm pretty confident that it'll taste good."

"That's good to hear.", the Allmate gave back and glanced at his owner walking behind them. "My master has a tendency not to care too much for his intake of nutrition, so I'm thankful if somebody is going to supervise that."  
Mink looked back at the bird, but appeared not to have heard what he had said - or not to care about it for that matter, so the cockatoo directed his view back to Clear and noticed a change in him. A smile had been plastered to Clear's face when he had boasted about his cooking skills before, but now he looked at the bird sitting on his shoulder with a questioning look.  
"Is something the matter?", the mechanical bird asked and his conversation partner seemed a bit flustered by the question.

"No, it's just... I'm sorry, but I simply cannot remember your name, Cockatoo-san, even though you've been part of master's team when we headed to Oval Tower.", he hesitantly admitted and seemed a bit crestfallen to not be able to address the Allmate properly.

"That's because I've never introduced myself.", came the flat answer from the pink bird, "But it doesn't matter what you call me, since I do not have a name."

"Eh?"  
Clear blinked.  
"You don't have a name, Cockatoo-san? What does Mink-san call you then?"

"Usually something along the lines of 'you', 'hey' or 'bird'."

There had been no hurt undertone in the bird's voice, only his usual aura of indifference towards the matter, but Clear still frowned and tried to project his thoughts.  
"Doesn't not having a name frustrate you, Cockatoo-san? If I try to remember, what I was referred to as before I was given my name by my grandfather, it was just a row of numbers. It was... kind of degrading."

The Allmate perched on Clear's shoulder kept quiet and then looked over his shoulder towards his owner again. Mink still seemed not to have heard their conversation and the bird caught himself thinking that he wished Mink's attention would have been drawn towards the matter, since he was the one capable of giving him a name after all. But then he looked back at Clear and appeared as unfazed as ever.  
"A name is not that important. Call me whatever you like."  
Before Clear could react to the cockatoo's view on the subject, the Allmate spread his wings and was back riding the winds over the head of his owner and companion again.

Clear involuntarily stopped walking as his eyes followed the pink bird in the sky.

When Mink arrived by his side he gave him a questioning look.  
"What is it?"

As if Mink's question had dragged him back to reality, Clear jerked and scratched his back of the head before trying to collect his thoughts again.  
"Oh, it's... It's nothing, really."  
He finally started to move again with Mink walking beside him now.  
"I was just talking to your Allmate about the importance of a name, but... I guess my perception of the matter is different from your cockatoo's, Mink-san."

Mink simply rose an eyebrow and then gave his Allmate soaring in the skies a skeptical look.

He never had thought about giving the bird a name until now. He had been nothing more than a tool to be used for Mink's plans after all. He was useful to him, because he was a machine and because they were connected in a way that didn't make the Allmate question his motivations or how he was doing things. But the situation had changed since he had left Midorijima and now that the matter had come up, he wondered why he had even brought the Allmate with him in the first place. He guessed that he had just grown so accustomed to having him by his side, that it had just felt natural to take him with him, even if he was about to end his own life in his home country. He had been able to share his thoughts with the bird, his plans, his motivations. He had never been rebuked by his Allmate, if anything he had been questioned on the meaning of his way of doing things out of sheer curiosity for human beings by the A. I. implanted into the machine. Realizing all of that lead to the conclusion that the bird had become more than just a thing to be used for Mink, he had become something akin to a friend for him, a "someone", not an "it" anymore, and a somebody deserved to have a name.

As he watched the cockatoo drawing circles in the sky over their heads and riding the wind like it was his nature, something came to mind and Mink stopped walking. As if commanded to do so, the mechanical bird soared downwards to land on Mink's outstretched arm.

"I am going to give you a name if you are willing to take one now."

Mink's Allmate blinked at him and cocked his head with the curiosity of a bird, but said nothing, as if he was going to accept whatever might come out of his master's mouth.

"I will give you the name of a god of wind, storm and fire who helped attempting to create mankind. His name is Rulacane."

"Rulacane.", the bird repeated and then nodded. He seemed pleased to share his name with a deity and grateful to be acknowledged as worthy by Mink to carry a name now. Then he took off towards the vast heavens again, as if to demonstrate that Mink's choice of his name had not been made by chance.

"He seems happy that you have given him a name, Mink-san.", Clear commented with a smile as he watched the bird acting as if the sky belonged to him only.

Mink answered Clear's smile with a small lift of his corners of the mouth and then began to walk towards his house again.

It was weird how fast things could be changed, he thought. The time, that had felt to Mink as if it had come to a standstill since that dreadful day in his past, suddenly seemed to tick on faster than usual. It was as if he had to catch up on the many things he had paid no mind to, while he had been on his mission to carry out his plans considering Toue, as fast as he could. Mink drew in a deep breath and let out a long sigh. He had to slow down - no, he actually could slow down now. There was no reason for haste anymore.

When they finally arrived Mink's cabin, the taller man told Clear to rest up for a moment, before they would head out again, while he was going to change in his room. He had kept it to himself, but the sudden urge to change his appearance before setting foot into the neighboring village had grown within him the moment he had began to think about the things he would need if he wanted to start to make a living over here. If he was planning to eat, then he had to spend money on food and in order to earn this, he had to work - easy as that. Maybe he would find a job offer on his way through the village and first impressions were important, so the look of him as an ex-convict might not be the best choice. He had not that much to choose from, though, since a change of clothes had been the last thing he had thought about when he had boarded a plane that ultimately had his own grave as its destination. Therefore he decided to make the best out of what he had.

He started by changing out of the gray coat he wore and unshackled himself from the heavy chains around his neck and wrists. Their weight didn't seem to leave his body completely, however. In the absence of spare clothes to wear due to not having planned to be still alive as of now, Mink settled with just wearing his black t-shirt, his ragged jeans and his boots the way he had done it in Midorijima as well. He removed the pink bandana and the hair tie he had used to keep a good portion of his hair back to prevent it from falling down and blocking his view, and loosened his ponytail. Unshackled and with his hair let down with a middle parting, he felt less restrained altogether, but thought that something was missing that would make him more comfortable while walking around. Then he faintly remembered to still have some of his old, handcrafted jewelry back from the time when he had tried to settle into that house years before, so he looked for the box that contained these. He found it where he had left it, albeit a bit dusty, and chose to take a red and black bracelet to ward off negative energy and a small necklace with a lone, short feather in its center. He also kept the bracelet on his left wrist, which was made of rainbow coloured pearls and also worked as his coil. With the positivity all of those items stood for put on his body, Mink felt more secure and finally somewhat lighter than before. Having the need to look at himself now, he opened his empty wardrobe and gazed at the inside of the door featuring a mirror. Staring at his reflection made him notice something he had trained himself to get used to over the years: the blueish eye colour looking back at him. It wasn't the natural colour his eyes had, just the result of wearing special contacts to help against Toue's hypnotic lights Mink had encountered in Platinum Jail. It had become that much of a habit to put them in every day, that the thought of not doing so hadn't even crossed Mink's mind this morning. But now that he tried to rid himself of an image put up like a front, he deemed the contacts unnecessary and took them out, too. Blinking at the mirror, two golden eyes shone back at him now. He finally recognized his reflection as something he could get used to.

Having been faced with the emptiness of his wardrobe as he closed the door again, Mink tried to come up with what clothes he would need in the future. A new coat was a necessity, given how the weather was behaving in this area and the fact that his old, gray coat featured only one intact sleeve. Another shirt besides the one he wore now was certainly a good idea as well, same went for his ragged pants.  
Mink sighed.  
These new purchases might cost quite some money and he hadn't brought much with himself, only enough to pay for his flight and a bit of spare change to get to his destination from the airport, if transportation was needed. It was probably enough to pay for some food for the time being, but he probably would have to put upgrading his stock of clothes on hold for now.  
With that in mind he gave his cast-off, gray coat another look. Even if taking it off had felt like lifting a burden off himself, going outside without another layer of clothing would not be a wise decision considering the unpredictability of the weather over here. And with money being tight, becoming ill was the last thing he could afford. Therefore he decided to put the clothing's usefulness before his own feelings and decided to put it back on for the time being. But the way it looked still bothered him, so he searched for some scissors he kept close to his tools for making jewelry back from the old days, and cut off both sleeves around the armhole to make the whole item look more symmetrical again. One being off was a mistake, but two sleeves missing was on purpose - or something like that was his line of thought. Having cut the coat to something akin to an overlong vest of sorts, Mink slid it over his shoulders and finally left his room.

Stepping into the living area, he found Clear sitting on a wooden chair across a likewise wooden table in front of his couch and chatting away with his Allmate perched on his shoulder. The albino smiled at Mink when he entered the room and clapped his hands together in admiration.

"Mink-san!", he beamed, "You look great like that."  
Then he got up from his seat and was suddenly eye to eye with Mink by standing on his toes and made a wondering face.  
"Oh, you changed your eye colour as well, Mink-san, how did you do this?"

Mink was uncomfortable upon the sudden closeness and took a step backwards, before he answered him in a pressed voice.  
"Contacts. This is my natural eye colour."

"Oooh, I see!", Clear smiled and then added: "Your eyes look really pretty - like the sun!"

Not being used to compliments, Mink broke eye-contact and spoke about an entirely different subject without looking at Clear directly.  
"Just to make a rough estimate of living expenses for the time being: Do you need to eat?"

"EH?"

Clear blinked as if he hadn't understood the question and Mink let a sigh escape his nose.

"I know you can eat, but do you need to eat to keep going?"

Clear finally got, that the question was asked because he wasn't quite human body-wise and his mood felt subdued as he answered him.  
"Uhm... Yes, I do need to eat, Mink-san. I can function without taking in food, like I did from yesterday to today, for example, but I can't keep that up forever."

He sent an unsure look towards Mink, but neither the man's expression nor his voice had a hint of being angry, when he answered him matter-of-factly.

"Food for two people it is then."  
Mink roughly counted the money he had left in his head and made a grim face upon the realisation that they wouldn't last long on his savings alone.

Clear tried to guess what might go through Mink's mind, but came to the conclusion that money could be a problem for Mink. Not wanting to be a burden on the man, he told him about his pocket money.  
"Uhm, I can pay for myself, Mink-san. There is some money stashed on the card I got at the airport when I bought my flight ticket."  
He fished the card out of his coat pocket and held it up in front of Mink.  
"See? There should still be something left on it."

Mink lifted his eyebrows and let Clear hand him his card, so he could run it over his bracelet-like coil to read the sum deposited on the piece of plastic.  
The number lighting up slightly impressed him and he looked at Clear approvingly as he handed him back his card.  
"This does help out."

Clear's smile returned to his face, but the next second he jolted up as a thought hit him.  
"Ah! Now that I think about it, since Mink-san is willing to let me stay at his house, don't I need to pay you rent? Will it be enough for that, too?"

Mink appeared to be surprised of Clear's way of thinking, but gave him a slight shake of the head.  
"You can make yourself useful at the house and we'll call it even."

"Eh? Is that really okay?"

Mink already seemed to have enough of the topic and just waved a hand at him lazily.  
"It won't hurt to get a job later on, but we can discuss this some other time."

"Understood, Mink-san!", Clear beamed and appeared as happy as a little kid.

They left the bird to watch over the house and set out to head over to the closest village then.  
Mink finally took the time to actually take in what resources he had at his disposal around here with his eyes. Food was a given, it seemed, as was clothing, which were two points Mink was able to check off from his list. There even was a small hardware store, which Mink thought useful if he needed to add tools to his collection or materials to work on his house should the need arise. Glancing at Clear, who appeared to take in every detail of the small village with a childlike euphoria dancing on his facial features, Mink looked for a store providing repairs for mechanical things, but couldn't find any as he casually looked around. He hoped it wasn't needed, but if something were to happen to Clear, Mink wouldn't be able to help him, since his skills were very limited in that direction, same went for Rulacane of course. He made a mental note to look up possible shops in this area later on his coil.

For now the most pressing matter was to organize some food, so Mink headed for the store providing that and inspected the display in front of the shop. The food looked fresh but sparsely and a somewhat high-priced. It was probably due to the village being small and remote, but Mink was pretty sure there must be something like a weekly market being held around here, so it might be best to ask the people living here about that later.  
Mink sighed.  
Interacting with people outside of his Rib team and not just shouting orders at somebody to get things done for him was something Mink had to get used to again. For now the shop would provide what he needed, though, so he entered it and got himself a stack of the most basic things like milk, eggs, floor, oil and of course coffee, alongside some other items. His fridge was pretty much empty, but he didn't want to overstock either, since the belief of his people had always been to only eat what's absolutely necessary and wasting food due to it getting spoiled was a downright no-go for him. Still, restocking from zero meant to pay for a lot of things and to carry an equal lot of grocery bags. Clear was right at this side and offered to carry more than half the stuff he bought, though, so Mink didn't really worry how to get all of it home, when they left the shop.

Counting the money being left from his own savings, Mink frowned and wondered whether he should go for a new set of clothes again. They had their hands full with groceries anyway, but they couldn't have done it the other way around, because Mink put nourishments before clothing and didn't want to save on the wrong things. Clear had said he would help out with his money, but Mink had taken that as a way to last longer with what they had then spending money on things outside of what was most needed. And his clothes weren't that well-worn to fall off his body yet, to he kind of still refused to pay for something new at this point in time. Still, he couldn't stop himself from at least taking a short look at the mannequins in the shopwindow when they passed by the clothing store on their way out of town. Maybe it was just because Mink connected getting himself a new outfit with finally putting that chapter with Toue behind himself, but with no financial security backing him up yet, due to having no income as of now, he refused to let himself be lured into the shop.

Clear followed Mink's view as he walked behind him and briefly glanced at the display. He was pretty sure the clothes would look good on Mink, but since they didn't enter the shop, Clear was unsure whether Mink was truly interested in them. Therefore, he decided to just ask him.  
"Would you like to go in and buy these clothes, Mink-san? I'm sure they will suit you."

Mink looked over his shoulder at his companion without stopping his feet, and met Clear's curious look. He sighed and gave him a somewhat disgruntled answer.  
"Not right now when money is tight. There are more important things to consider."

"Eh? Is that so?"  
Clear's eyes flew over the price chart standing next to the mannequin and summed up the costs as he continued to follow Mink. Judging by how much they had spent on food today and how much of his own pocket money was still left on his card, Clear thought it would not be a problem, even if Mink should decide to buy himself a new set of clothes, but he had noticed how short-spoken Mink had been towards the topic and how he had almost growled at him. Maybe Mink knew something he didn't, Clear wasn't sure how spending money on things worked, considering the very few occasions he had experienced doing it so far.

They moved on without talking much on their way back to Mink's house.


End file.
